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<pre style="font-family: courier new,courier,monospace;"><big><big><big
 style="font-weight: bold;">Why New Muds Should Use Dead Souls</big></big> <br></big><br>    Normally I like to stay neutral, and say stuff like<br>'Use whatever codebase you're comfortable with, I don't<br>want to start a flamewar.' And today that would be half<br>right. I don't want to start a flamewar.<br><br>    But I'd like to take a moment out to advocate LPmuds<br>for new mud admins. If this is going to get you all pissy<br>and flamey, you can just stop reading here.<br><br>    I was inspired in part by recent discussions about the<br>division of labor between 'coders' and 'owners' and such on<br>other codebases. This seems bizarre to me. It's my opinion<br>that a mud 'owner' should be just as capable as any person<br>on her mud to build and code, and manage personnel besides. I <br>see it kind of like the role of a captain on a ship. The captain<br>may not have to be in the engine room answering 'ahead one<br>third', but she damn well should know *how* to, if the<br>situation calls for it.<br><br>    A ship captain should know every inch of her ship, how<br>many lifeboats, etc. If the ship is not performing well,<br>she should be able to identify this and she should be able<br>to supervise the corrections, if necessary.<br><br>    Obviously any metaphor has its limits. You can come up<br>with all sorts of reasons why the ship metaphor is flawed.<br>But the main reason I use it is the sense it carries of<br>ultimate responsibility resting on the shoulders of one<br>officer. Whatever happens on a ship, however successful its<br>mission, whatever disaster it incurs, all of it, is the<br>responsibility of the captain. The buck stops there.<br><br>    So, to me, 'my mud is failing because I can't get a <br>coder' doesn't make any sense at all. Obviously a successful<br>mud will usually have a staff of more than one, but at<br>first, it's just you and your dream, man. You gotta build<br>that boat by yourself at first, before you can convince a<br>proper crew to join you.<br><br>    And if you just get a prebuilt boat you don't know how<br>to customize, why should anyone join you, when they can just<br>get their own? And why should they listen to you, if you<br>don't even know enough to run it yourself? I see lots of<br>muds adrift at sea here, with a lone 'captain' at the bow,<br>calling out in the darkness for an experienced crew that<br>will never come.<br><br>    I can only guess that the problem here is either fear<br>of C or inability to learn it fast enough to suit the admin.<br>I'm not addressing the newbie admins who are diligently<br>studying their C textbooks, determined to make a proper go<br>of it. I'm talking to those newbie admins who have decided<br>to make a mud and are determined to be admins and not C<br>coders.<br><br>    If this is so, then my proposition is, forget about<br>starting a mud whose guts you don't intend to know inside<br>out. If C is too hard, and you doubt ever knowing it<br>well enough to rewrite commands and system code, then <br>you should drop your C based mud. You should think about<br>a codebase that uses a language you stand a chance of <br>picking up quickly and easily.<br><br>    Yep. LPC. LPC is a 'coding language' in that it has <br>variables and objects and such. But these variables and<br>objects are not the 'bare metal' code elements<br>that you see in naked C. In LPC you have a level of<br>abstraction between you and that cold, hard C that makes<br>coding much easier...more like scripting than C coding.<br><br>    Ok, let me ask you, in a Diku<br>style mud, how do you set a room so that you can't magically<br>teleport in or out? In Dead Souls, all you do is add this<br>to the file:<br><br>SetProperty('no teleport', 1);<br><br>    In a Diku style mud, how would you have a mob respond<br>to a player saying something to them? In Dead Souls, you<br>just add this line to the mob's file:<br><br>AddTalkResponse('hello', 'hi!');<br><br>    To make the mob do something when asked, you use AddCommandResponse.<br>To make it do or say something when *asked*, you use AddRequestResponse.<br>    How would you do it in Diku?<br><br>    Now, remember. This is not a 'Diku sucks' thread. For Diku<br>people, this stuff is presumably not that difficult. What I'm<br>showing you is how *trivial* this is to do, even for non-LPC people,<br>on LP muds. Don't get me wrong...you still need to spend a lot<br>of time going through docs, and looking at examples. But the<br>amount of time it takes to become LPC proficient is a tiny<br>fraction of the amount of time it takes to become C proficient<br>enough to handle mud coding.<br><br>    You want a mud, you're not sure you can learn C fast enough,<br>and you aren't having luck finding a talented coder that will<br>bend to your will. I say your choice is obvious. Try an LP mud on<br>for size. Get your mud on.<br><br>    Or wait for your knight in shining armor. Whichever comes first.<br><br>    There are plenty of LP mud libs out there. I suggest you<br>take a look at Dead Souls. It's super easy to set up, and there is<br>an online intermud chat community ready to help answer your<br>questions. <br><br><big>	 	<br><a
 href="../index.html">Dead Souls Homepage</a><br><br></big></pre>
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